By Michelle Tregear, Chief Programs Officer
When people with advanced cancer are offered a new treatment, they want to know not only “Will it help me live longer?” but also “Will it help me live better?” Clinical trials often measure quality of life, but results are usually shown as averages across groups of patients, which makes it hard for doctors and patients to understand what the treatment really means for an individual.
A new Lancet Oncology paper, written by members of the Common Sense Oncology (CSO) initiative and the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), tackles this problem and recommends a clearer way to report quality-of-life data in cancer trials.
While no trial can predict exactly what will happen to one person, reporting results as proportions of patients who improved, worsened, or stayed the same offers a more useful picture of the likelihood of benefit or harm. This approach is similar to how cancer trials already report tumor response rates (for example, how many patients had their tumors shrink) — but here the “response” is about whether people’s quality of life was maintained or improved, rather than worsened.
The recommendations also stress that:
This call to make quality-of-life results clear, transparent, and relevant is well aligned with a position NBCC has held for decades: that cancer research must measure outcomes that truly matter to patients and report them in ways that can guide real-world decisions.
